midrange-highrange router mill

[seth wiley]

hey cnczone! great work, great people, great community! your comments and works are inspiring to no end.

this is my first post and thread. i've been lurking cnczone forums for a while - doing general research to design and build an open source cnc machine.

to speed things up on my end (and keep myself focused!), i'll be documenting my process on this thread and looking for any available helpful community comments and provocative questions throughout this process. hopefully this information will benefit someone looking to do a similar project (as many of your projects have been useful to me thusfar.


so here goes!!


just for the record, location & date:

- philadelphia, pennsylvania, usa
- 05/11/2007


my skill level:

i am a junior architect w/ some background in machining and fabrication. i've worked extensively on techno-isel's lc series machines, run various haas cnc equipment, and used various manually-driven jet and bridgeport 3-axis millers and lathes. for this reason, the design of the machine's structural parts and linear guides does not seem to be such a stumbling block. i have sketched designs and will begin posting 3-d models and 2-d drawings of them ASAP.

i have no significant experience in electronics and controller design. this will be the most challenging part of the machine's design and upkeep for me. so any help this this area is really appreciated! i may, in the end, go with an off-the-shelf controller package to simplify my life and shorten the development timeline. my past cnc experiences have all been with mastercam interfaces, which are pretty good as a benchmark.


machine use:

- short-production-run prototyping machine
- furniture-scale objects
- cutting woods, plastics, foams, thin non-ferrous metals
- 2d profile cutting
- 3d complex-curvature surface contouring
- drill/pecking


budget:

- total cost: less than $7,500


timeline:

- finished, working machine in 3 months (very, very hopeful)
- 3 weeks to design machine
- 5 weeks to purchase / design controls
- 4 weeks to order, fabricate, and assemble machine
- (try to get some sleep in there somwhere)


machine operations:

- 3-axis milling machine (with 4th axis possible down the road)
- cutting area: able to handle 4' x 8' x 6"thick material
- tolerance / repeatability: not sure on this one, +/-.007


machine construction:

- construction material: mainly aluminum
- overall frame: minitec aluminum extrusion (http://www.minitecframing.com/)
- linear guides: thompson, but can anyone suggest precision units that might be a bit less expensive??
- servo motors, not sure on the oz-in spec yet.


cutter head:

- if i can afford it, i'd love to get a columbo or perske spindle. possibly i can fit a used one in there and stay on budget.
- any better suggestions on cost-effective spindles?
- no tool changer (obviously)


controls outline:

- as i said above, this is a really grey area for me
- i've been researching servos and controllers, but i still can't wrap my head around the electronics. can anyone recommend a book, site, or thread for my edification?
- in leu of building the controls myself, i've been looking into pre-assembled servo control packages, such as the ones from camtronics (http://www.machinetoolcamp.com/Prices.htm). it's about $3,300 and comes w/ 3 720oz-in servos pre-wired. has anyone used this kind of thing? any better ideas?


machine interface:

- for cost reasons, possibly linux emc 2 or mach 3, not sure. any ideas? mastercam would be nice, but it's pricey.


design:

- i'll start posting in the next day or so. any feed back will be totally appreciated.
- the design will be done in rhino software, which is not like solidworks in being able to animate machine operations during virtual design. too bad!



wow! glad that's out.

onward and upward!!

hope to hear from the community as this thing progresses.

be well.

[ger21]

The camtronics is a good package if you're not too sure what you're doing.

And MasterCAM is a CAM package, it won't run your machine. Unless you want to spend a few thousand more on a control package, Mach3 or EMC2 will be your main options, although there are a few others in their price range, like DeskCNC and CNC Zeus.

[seth wiley]

Originally Posted by ger21 The camtronics is a good package if you're not too sure what you're doing. And MasterCAM is a CAM package, it won't run your machine. Unless you want to spend a few thousand more on a control package, Mach3 or EMC2 will be your main options, although there are a few others in their price range, like DeskCNC and CNC Zeus.

thanks Gerry. yes, sorry for the slip of the tongue regarding Mastercam. i do realize that it is not a machine controller, but rather a modeler, toolpath, and g-code generator.

do you have experience with the Camtronics package? both the Camtronics and the Machine Tool Camp packages look reasonably well developed. but it's a big chunk o change, so i'm hoping someone out here in cnczone-land has some experience (either positive or negative) with the company(-ies).

[ger21]

I don't personally have any experience with Camtronics, but I've only heard good things about them.

You might also want to look at www.candcnc.com